A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs eBook

in the army under the purchase system. General
Haldimand insisted that Captain Matthews, who appears
to have been his relative, should get it, since the
General “must provide for his own family.”
At this time Malcolm Fraser too thought of selling
out but he made difficulties about terms and the opportunity
passed; Fraser was, indeed, to live to see recruiting
service in the war of 1812. When the war was
over, Nairne hurried to Murray Bay and to the country
life in which he delighted, and in his correspondence
we soon find him discussing not high questions of
national defence but the qualities of “a well-bred
bull calf” and of an improved plough. “I
have more satisfaction,” he says, perhaps with
a touch of irony, “in a country life and [in]
cultivating a farm than even [in] being employed as
first major of the Quebec militia.” Henceforth
his heart is wholly at Murray Bay and in his interests
there.

[Footnote 8: Diary of an English Officer.
Proceedings of the Literary and Historical Society
of Quebec, 1871-72, p. 61.]

[Footnote 9: See Appendix C., p. 273, for the
text of his letter to his sister describing the operations
of the winter at Quebec. It is an able review
of the campaign.]

[Footnote 12: The book in which Nairne kept the
accounts, with the names of the recipients of the
king’s bounty, is still at Murray Bay.]

CHAPTER V

THE LAST DAYS OF JOHN NAIRNE

Nairne’s careful education of
his children.—­His son John enters the
army.—­Nairne’s counsels to his son.—­John
Nairne goes to India.—­His death.—­Nairne’s
declining years.—­His activities at Murray
Bay.—­His income.—­His daughter
Christine and Quebec society.—­The
isolation of Murray Bay in Winter.—­Signals
across the river.—­Nairne’s reading.—­His
notes about current events.—­The fear
of a French invasion of England.—­Thoughts
of flight from Scotland to Murray Bay.—­Nairne’s
last letter, April 20th, 1802.—­His
death and burial at Quebec.

Colonel Nairne’s life was troubled with many
sorrows. In 1773, when he was on a visit to Scotland,
Malcolm Fraser had had the painful duty of writing
to tell him of the death of three of his infant children
at Murray Bay from a prevailing epidemic. His
daughter, Anne, born in 1784, was sent to Scotland
to be educated. She contracted consumption and
after a prolonged illness died there in 1796.
“This event gave me great affliction,”
wrote Nairne, “she was always a most amiable
child.” There now remained two sons and
three daughters,[13] and Nairne may well have been
certain that his name would go down to an abundant